Philhellenism - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Philhellenism was an intellectual fashion prominent at the turn of the 19th century, that led Europeans like Lord Byron or Charles Nicolas Fabvier

Charles Nicolas Fabvier

Charles Nicolas Fabvier was an ambassador, general and French member of parliament who played a distinguished role in the Greek War of Independence.- Career under Napoleon :...

to advocate for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

. Byron provided concrete assistance in commissioning several seagoing war vessels that proved to be useful in the successful Greek War of Independence

Greek War of Independence

The Greek War of Independence, also known as the Greek Revolution was a successful war of independence waged by the Greek revolutionaries between...

in the early 1820s, as well as sacrificing his life to the cause.

The later 19th-century European Philhellenism was largely to be found among the Classicists, a field undergoing a growing split between anthropological and Classicist approaches to ancient Greece

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

The legacy of Philhellenism

In the period of political reaction and repression after the fall of Napoleon, when the liberal-minded, educated and prosperous bourgeois class of European societies found the romantic revolutionary ideals

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

of 1789–92 repressed by the restoration of old regimes at home, the idea of the re-creation of a Greek state on the very territories that were sanctified by their view of Antiquity — which was reflected even in the furnishings of their own parlors

Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...

and the contents of their bookcases — offered an ideal, set at a romantic distance. Under these conditions, the Greek uprising

Greek War of Independence

The Greek War of Independence, also known as the Greek Revolution was a successful war of independence waged by the Greek revolutionaries between...

constituted a source of inspiration and expectations that could never actually be fulfilled, disappointing what Paul Cartledge called "the Victorian self-identification with the Glory that was Greece".

Another popular subject of interest in Greek culture at the turn of the 19th century was the shadowy Scythian philosopher Anacharsis

Anacharsis

Anacharsis was a Scythian philosopher who travelled from his homeland on the northern shores of the Black Sea to Athens in the early 6th century BCE and made a great impression as a forthright, outspoken "barbarian", apparently a forerunner of the Cynics, though none of his works have...

. The new prominence of Anacharsis was sparked by Jean-Jacques Barthélemy

Jean-Jacques Barthélemy

Jean-Jacques Barthélemy was a French writer and numismatist.-Early life:Barthélemy was born at Cassis, in Provence, and began his classical studies at the College of Oratory in Marseilles. He took up philosophy and theology at the Jesuits' college, and finally attended the seminary of the Lazarists...

's fanciful Travels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece (1788), a learned imaginary travel journal, one of the first historical novels, which a modern scholar has called "the encyclopedia of the new cult of the antique" in the late 18th century. It had a high impact on the growth of philhellenism in France: the book went through many editions, was reprinted in the United States and was translated into German and other languages. It later inspired European sympathy for the Greek struggle for independence

Greek War of Independence

The Greek War of Independence, also known as the Greek Revolution was a successful war of independence waged by the Greek revolutionaries between...

and spawned sequels and imitations throughout the 19th century.

In German culture the first phase of philhellenism can be traced in the careers and writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann

Johann Joachim Winckelmann

Johann Joachim Winckelmann was a German art historian and archaeologist. He was a pioneering Hellenist who first articulated the difference between Greek, Greco-Roman and Roman art...

, one of the inventors of art history, Friedrich August Wolf

Friedrich August Wolf

Friedrich August Wolf was a German philologist and critic.He was born at Hainrode, a village not far from Nordhausen, Germany. His father was the village schoolmaster and organist...

, who inaugurated modern Homeric scholarship with his Prolegomena (1795) and the enlightened bureaucrat Wilhelm von Humboldt

Wilhelm von Humboldt

Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand Freiherr von Humboldt was a German philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of Humboldt Universität. He is especially remembered as a linguist who made important contributions to the philosophy of language and to the theory and practice...

. In the German states, the private obsession with ancient Greece took public forms, institutionalizing an elite philhellene ethos through the gymnasium

Gymnasium (school)

A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...

, to revitalize German education at home, and providing on two occasions high-minded philhellene German princes ignorant of modern-day Greek realities, to be Greek sovereigns.

Schiller

Friedrich Schiller

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...

s 1788 poem "The Gods of Greece" contrasted the exquisite and beautiful world inhabited by the Greek deities with the calculating, joyless and uncreative present.

During the later 19th century the new studies of archaeology and anthropology began to offer a quite separate view of ancient Greece, which had previously been experienced at second-hand only through Greek literature

Ancient Greek literature

Ancient Greek literature refers to literature written in the Ancient Greek language until the 4th century.- Classical and Pre-Classical Antiquity :...

, Greek sculpture

Ancient Greek sculpture

Ancient Greek sculpture is the sculpture of Ancient Greece. Modern scholarship identifies three major stages. They were used to depict the battles, mythology, and rulers of the land known as Ancient Greece.-Geometric:...

and architecture

Architecture of Ancient Greece

The architecture of Ancient Greece is the architecture produced by the Greek-speaking people whose culture flourished on the Greek mainland and Peloponnesus, the Aegean Islands, and in colonies in Asia Minor and Italy for a period from about 900 BC until the 1st century AD, with the earliest...

. 20th century heirs of the 19th-century view of an unchanging, immortal quality of "Greekness" are typified in J.C. Lawson's Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion (1910) or R. and E. Blum's The Dangerous Hour: The lore of crisis and mystery in rural Greece (1970); according to the Classicist Paul Cartledge, they "represent this ideological construction of Greekness as an essence, a Classicizing essence to be sure, impervious to such historic changes as that from paganism to Orthodox Christianity, or from subsistence peasant agriculture to more or less internationally market-driven capitalist farming."

Among the modern historical relativists, the Classical heritage is only one facet of the vision of Greece that is imagined as ancestral. The theme of Nikos Dimou

Nikos Dimou

Nikos Dimou, born in 1935 in Athens, is a Greek writer. He has worked in advertising and as a columnist for magazines and newspapers.- Biography :...

's The Misfortune to be Greek is the perception that the Philhellenic West's projected desire for the modern Greeks to live up to their ancestors' glorious past has always been a burden upon the Greeks themselves.

In particular, Western Philhellenism focused exclusively on the heritage of Classical Greek history, in effect negating or rejecting the heritage of Byzantine

Byzantine

Byzantine usually refers to the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages.Byzantine may also refer to:* A citizen of the Byzantine Empire, or native Greek during the Middle Ages...

history which for the Greeks themselves is at least as important (often, more important).

Philhellenism and art

Philhellism also created a renewed interest in the artistic movement of Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism

, which idealized 5th-century Classical Greek art and architecture., very much at second hand, through the writings of the first generation of art historians, like Johann Joachim Winckelmann

Johann Joachim Winckelmann

Johann Joachim Winckelmann was a German art historian and archaeologist. He was a pioneering Hellenist who first articulated the difference between Greek, Greco-Roman and Roman art...

and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was a German writer, philosopher, dramatist, publicist, and art critic, and one of the most outstanding representatives of the Enlightenment era. His plays and theoretical writings substantially influenced the development of German literature...

.

The groundswell of the Philhellenic movement was result of two generations of intrepid artists and amateur treasure-seekers, from Stuart and Revett, who published their measured drawings as The Antiquities of Athens and culminating with the removal of sculptures from Aegina

Aegina

Aegina is one of the Saronic Islands of Greece in the Saronic Gulf, from Athens. Tradition derives the name from Aegina, the mother of Aeacus, who was born in and ruled the island. During ancient times, Aegina was a rival to Athens, the great sea power of the era.-Municipality:The municipality...

and the Parthenon

Parthenon

The Parthenon is a temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the Greek goddess Athena, whom the people of Athens considered their virgin patron. Its construction began in 447 BC when the Athenian Empire was at the height of its power. It was completed in 438 BC, although...

(the Elgin marbles

Elgin Marbles

The Parthenon Marbles, forming a part of the collection known as the Elgin Marbles , are a collection of classical Greek marble sculptures , inscriptions and architectural members that originally were part of the Parthenon and other buildings on the Acropolis of Athens...

), works that ravished the British Philhellenes, many of whom, however, deplored their removal.

Philhellenes in Antiquity

In antiquity, the term 'philhellene' was used to describe both non-Greeks who were fond of Greek culture and Greeks who patriotically upheld their culture. The Liddell-Scott Greek-English Lexicon defines 'philhellen' as "fond of the Hellenes, mostly of foreign princes, as Amasis

Amasis II

Amasis II or Ahmose II was a pharaoh of the Twenty-sixth dynasty of Egypt, the successor of Apries at Sais. He was the last great ruler of Egypt before the Persian conquest.-Life:...

; of Parthia

Parthia

Parthia is a region of north-eastern Iran, best known for having been the political and cultural base of the Arsacid dynasty, rulers of the Parthian Empire....

n kings[...]; also of Hellenic tyrants, as Jason of Pherae

Jason of Pherae

Jason of Pherae was the ruler of Thessaly during the period just before Philip II of Macedon came to power. He had succeeded his father Lycophron I of Pherae as tyrant of Pherae and was appointed tagus, or king, of Thessaly in the 370s BC and soon extended his control to much of the surrounding...

and generally of Hellenic

Greeks

The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....

(Greek) patriots.

Some examples:

Jason of Pherae
Jason of Pherae
Jason of Pherae was the ruler of Thessaly during the period just before Philip II of Macedon came to power. He had succeeded his father Lycophron I of Pherae as tyrant of Pherae and was appointed tagus, or king, of Thessaly in the 370s BC and soon extended his control to much of the surrounding...

http://www.ancientlibrary.com/smith-bio/1662.html
Evagoras
Evagoras
Evagoras was the king of Salamis in Cyprus. The son of Nicocles, a previous king of Salamis, he claimed descent from Teucer, the son of Telamon and half-brother of Ajax, and his family had long been rulers of Salamis, although during his childhood Salamis came under Phoenician control, which...

of Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...

http://www.ancientlibrary.com/smith-bio/1162.html and Philip II were both called "philhellenes" by Isocrates
Isocrates
Isocrates , an ancient Greek rhetorician, was one of the ten Attic orators. In his time, he was probably the most influential rhetorician in Greece and made many contributions to rhetoric and education through his teaching and written works....

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/vor?lookup=file%2Fllhn&advanced=1&doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0143&lang=greek&group=bilevel
The rulers of the Parthian Empire
Parthian Empire
The Parthian Empire , also known as the Arsacid Empire , was a major Iranian political and cultural power in ancient Persia...

, merging Iranic and Greek culture described themselves as philhellenes.

Roman philhellenes

The literate upper classes of Rome were increasingly Hellenized

Hellenization

Hellenization is a term used to describe the spread of ancient Greek culture, and, to a lesser extent, language. It is mainly used to describe the spread of Hellenistic civilization during the Hellenistic period following the campaigns of Alexander the Great of Macedon...

in their culture during the 3rd century BC.

Among Romans the career of Titus Quinctius Flamininus

Titus Quinctius Flamininus

Titus Quinctius Flamininus was a Roman politician and general instrumental in the Roman conquest of Greece.Member of the gens Quinctia, and brother to Lucius Quinctius Flamininus, he served as a military tribune in the Second Punic war and in 205 BC he was appointed propraetor in Tarentum...

(died 174 BC), who appeared at the Isthmian Games

Isthmian Games

The Isthmian Games or Isthmia were one of the Panhellenic Games of Ancient Greece, and were named after the isthmus of Corinth, where they were held...

in Corinth

Corinth

Corinth is a city and former municipality in Corinthia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Corinth, of which it is the seat and a municipal unit...

in 196 BC and proclaimed the freedom of the Greek states, was fluent in Greek, stood out, according to Livy

Livy

Titus Livius — known as Livy in English — was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people. Ab Urbe Condita Libri, "Chapters from the Foundation of the City," covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome well before the traditional foundation in 753 BC...

, as a great admirer of Greek culture; the Greeks hailed him as their liberator.

The legacy of Philhellenism

Philhellenism and art

Philhellenes in Antiquity

Roman philhellenes

Further reading

External links